A Lot and a Little

There’s been a lot going on fleet-wise, but only a little to show for it. The “lot” that’s been going on includes a couple of just-say-no’s, a that’s-so-awesome, and one thank-you-very-much that’s led to quite a bit of shopping and dreaming.



The first just-say-no was my passing on the V8 ‘vair. While the seller is offering an exciting beast of a Corvair for a VERY fair forty-nine hundred dollars, the situation just isn’t right for me to pull the trigger. Even though replacing the built 302 Chevy smallblock that currently resides in its back seat for something tamer would net me a couple grand and selling Glinda should get me a couple more, there’s just too much time and money that would be tied up in the deal – there’s that two parts of that dreaded TTT again. This car, by the way, is still available. In addition to the JPEG, you can click here to see a bunch of photos that were taken a couple years back by the car's builder before Earl (the seller) purchased the car and did a lot of finishing work. Earl can be reached at 410-705-8823 or earlbirdman@yahoo.com.

I still struggle with all the time and money I’m putting into Glinda, a car that I’ll always have to be doing rust repair on. It would be such a time-saver to have a solid, rust-free LM coupe as my track car/street car. That brings me to my second just-say-no. I was using the SearchTempest website to torment myself this morning and came across a listing for a 65 corvair 140 prodject(sic) with no price. Not one to ever pass on a misspelled Corvair ad, I clicked on the link and was rewarded with a number of photos of a very solid-looking primer gray coupe with its rear-end sitting high in its drivetrain-less-ness.

I shot the seller an e-mail asking about the condition and what he (or she) was asking for this prospective replacement to the rusty Glinda. I received a reply rather quickly telling me the car’s as solid as the jpegs show. The seller told me to, “Give offer if u want to come see it.” The response is still in my inbox, but even if I could get the car for a few hundred dollars (seller says, “need to get this car gone”), and even though I could easily borrow a trailer and make the roundtrip to Youngstown, OH for about $150, and even though this car’s already got all the manual shift and clutch parts in place, and even though I’ve though I’ve got a tranny and diff that’ll bolt right in, I don’t have a running engine. Because of that I haven’t really given it much more thought (yeah, right). Here are the photos that were in the ad.



The that’s-so-awesome occurred last evening when I received a photo-text from the guy that bought Rich’s Corsa. He’s in the final stages of reassembling the car after its new paintjob is finally finished. It is one really cool car now. It’s wonderful to see that he’s gotten so excited about it, and I really appreciate the frequent updates he sends me.

That brings me to my thank-you-very-much. The other day I got a phone call from my folks. My generous dad started the conversation by telling me he’d just sent a donation to the Tom Hughes Racing Fund (I’m calling it THRaF). He’d been reading between the lines of one of my Facebook postings, and decided I needed a fund and he needed to be the first contributor. Since finding his $500 check in my mail a couple days later, I’ve made a list of luxuries I’m going to get with the fund:
- Flamethrower Coil - Mufflers - Shifter Boot - Bucket Seats - Throttle Linkage Kit - Tunnel Pivot